


Thousand Ways To Remember

by duchessbird



Series: Volleyball Crush - Haikyuu Oneshots [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: DaiYui - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, Karasuno, Memory, Romance, Volleyball, haikyuu oneshots, mizukashi is not a canon character ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:41:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28450320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchessbird/pseuds/duchessbird
Summary: There are a thousand ways to remember.Even for a policeman, remembering was tricky. Daichi knew that better than anyone. But there are some things you can't forget, no matter how old you are, or how memories fade and are replaced by newer ones.Highschool. Friends. Laughter. Love.The first time he fell for Michimiya Yui.
Relationships: Michimiya Yui/Sawamura Daichi
Series: Volleyball Crush - Haikyuu Oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2083893
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Thousand Ways To Remember

There were a thousand ways to remember. 

One of those ways, Daichi realized, was to arrive at a car crash at the gates of a high school. Or rather, a car crash that used to be located at the school gates except now the offending vehicle was flipped upside down next to a tree. 

It was Karasuno High whose gates had been assaulted by the car. Tall iron poles that groaned whenever they were being closed. He remembered how he’d felt when they’d opened for the first time on his first day, how he’d walked past them, how they had saluted the hundreds of teenagers making their way to a whole new survival game. 

Karasuno High had been the start to many things. 

His largely successful volleyball team, for one. They had sparkled, really, they had. If Daichi could spread out the memories he’d treasured from those years, it would create a red carpet of colours and smiles and laughter, a line that could probably circle the whole earth twice. Memories filled with blood and sweat and tears, joy and strength, power. He’d give anything to have those days back, or at least an hour or so. Just to toss a receive or two to Sugawara, maybe, or to scold a moping Hinata for dripping ice-cream on the floor. Heck, he really wanted to play volleyball with them all again. It didn’t matter what team they were against. 

Just being part of the best team in the world, had been enough. 

Mizukashi, his friend and the only guy in the Miyagi police force who smoked on the scene, came strolling up to him. “You okay?” he said. “We’ve been trying to talk to the perp. You should come. Might listen, you know, since you have this father vibe.”

Daichi chuckled albeit distractedly. “I don’t have a father vibe.”

“Heck yeah, you do. Now come on.”  
Blowing a stream of smoke in his direction, Mizukashi went off. 

Just a while ago, he’d helped strap the unconscious girl who’d been sitting in the passenger seat and as a result had smashed half her brains away, onto the stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance. A paramedic had been screaming something in medical jargon he didn’t understand, and they’d pulled out the defibrillator, two paddles that looked for all the world like irons, and they’d shocked her. 

They’d gotten the pulse back. 

All Daichi had been thinking about, as he stared at the blood on his hands, was how short the girl’s hair was, brushing the sides of her neck, soft as mouse fur. It reminded him of Michimiya.  
A loud call from someone on his team brought him back to his senses again. “Coming,” Daichi called, and he strode towards the damaged car, behind which sat the driver, a lanky youth who Mizukashi had handcuffed and, quite obviously, smacked behind the head. 

“Sawamura, plus ultra, man,” the officer muttered. He patted Daichi’s back. 

Daichi rolled his eyes and squatted down, meeting the dead grey eyes of the boy. Thankfully, he hadn’t taken much of the hit and only his knee was bleeding while his left cheek was badly scratched. “Hey, kid.”

It was a while before the kid spoke. His voice was a sandpit. “Who the fuck are you?”

“The tooth fairy.”

“Like fucking hell. Let me go.”

“I’m sorry,” Daichi said. “But I can’t. Unless, of course, you tell me what happened.”

“Uh, actually, I think you already know. Drugs, alcohol, you guys. Already. Know,” the boy spat. “Let me go. I’m calling my lawyer.”

“Tough shit,” mused Mizukashi, “but you’re under eighteen, driving a car that isn’t yours, and sleeping with your dad’s student, so I think your lawyer is just stuff of dreams.”

“Mizukashi, cut him some slack,” Daichi berated. He turned to the boy again. “You do realize you almost killed yourself?”

“What if I wanted to?”

“Clearly the heavens didn’t want the same thing otherwise it wouldn’t have been the girl on that stretcher.”

At the mention of the girl, the boy’s eyes filled with tears. “Take me to Sayaka. Please.”

“You won’t be able to do anything even if we did.”

“She’ll want me. You’ll see. She’ll call my name and you’re all going to be arrested for denying me.”

“Aren’t you the one,” said Daichi, gesturing to the crash, the blood, the flashing lights of a police car, “who denied her?”

Five minutes later, Mizukashi was whistling as he escorted the boy to his car, while a few others waited for the tow truck to take the crashed car away. School would be closed tomorrow, was what Daichi heard. He sat down at the curb and pulled off his gloves. He’d helped do a search of the car and had found a stolen license as well as two tickets to Osaka. 

They’d been eloping.

And he was seventeen, his age when he’d still attended Karasuno High. 

Karasuno, like he’d said, had been the start to many things. And one of them had been his very first romance. 

Michimiya Yui. They’d grown up inseparable, all the way through elementary to middle school, and even through high school they’d continued being good friends. But it wasn’t until a few days into the first semester of his third year that he’d started seeing her in a new light. 

Daichi remembered everything a child remembers being cut by a shard of glass. Unforgettable. He’d been walking through those omnipresent gates again, after dismissal, when he’d heard the unmistakable sound of Yui’s laughter. He’d turned the corner and there she was, shaded by the shaggy form of a peppercorn tree, her back facing him. 

Clad in her navy blazer with her strong white legs slanted while she talked, dappled with sunlight, hands clasped behind her back, her nape exposed by the short tendrils of chocolate-brown hair, Daichi had realized it had been a long time since he’d seen her from behind. 

It made her look older, more feminine. It made her look like a whole other girl; someone he didn’t know.

From his position a few feet away, Daichi could see the boy’s expression as he conversed with Yui. He noticed all the tell-tale things, how the boy’s eyes darted once or twice around the girl’s body, how he watched the movement of her lips, how his cheeks reddened when she giggled again and punched him in a friendly sort of way. 

Then the boy said something. Yui had crossed her leg over the other and had tilted her head. It struck Daichi that in someone else’s company, Michimya Yui could be shy.

It was extraordinary, the feeling of observing a girl through the eyes of a boy that wasn’t him, that wasn’t the Daichi who’d spent his life with her. And then Yui had turned around, like she’d heard something, and she’d seen him there standing like a stalker and had called, “Sawamura! Over here!”

And Daichi had known, then, that this wasn’t a girl he didn’t know. 

This was a girl he knew too well. 

After that, it had been moments. Small ones, like when she bumped into him in the corridor and he’d caught the scent of her berry shampoo. Or when he and Suga wanted to ask for the court and had walked in on her team playing a practice match. She’d always looked amazing in a volleyball uniform, like a butterfly with a second pair of wings. Or when she’d choked on her bread at lunch and had dramatically collapsed on his table, upending his tray and splattering his blazer with steamed broccoli.

They’d had a good laugh out of that one. 

She was strong and talented and smart and funny. She was beautiful. But he kept this hidden infatuation to himself, because he was okay with staying friends. He didn’t mind. 

Sugawara and Asahi knew exactly how he felt, though, so he always panicked when they were in the same room. “Dude, just tell her,” Suga had teased him one day, when Yui had been spotted approaching him with extra bun bread she’d hoarded over lunch. 

“Shut up,” he muttered. “Please don’t say anything.”

“SAWAMURA! IT’S BUTTER OR CUSTARD FILLING, YOUR PICK!”

“The sooner you tell her the better you’ll feel,” Asahi said, eying the stampeding Yui a tad nervously. “Who knows, maybe she’ll even confess back.”

How dense Daichi had been. To the pink stain on her cheeks every time he came too close, or when he leaned over to take a bite of her bread. It wasn’t only him who had suffered.  
She gave him a good-luck charm before his match with Shiratorizawa. He knew, then, what he had to do. 

After the match, after he, Hinata, Kageyama, everyone, had screamed their lungs away in joy, had hugged each other till their bones almost cracked, he’d slipped out of the gymnasium, buzzing, like his body was on fire. He’d never just left before, just like that, but then he saw Michimiya, waiting at the back alley, knees drawn to her chest, and all at once, he quit being a high schooler. 

“Sawamura,” she said, when she saw him. She stood up. “I watched the whole game.”

Daichi said breathlessly, “Your charm. It worked. Do you have anything else to give me, Yui?”

“Anything else? Ahaha…does Tanaka want a separate charm?”

She looked up at him with those deep, Cadbury eyes, and in an instant he was kissing her, kissing those lips which had cheered his name throughout the whole game, those soft, utterly tempting lips, and then her hands were in his hair and she was kissing him back. 

He was sweaty and hot, after endless running around on court, but she was so lovely and sweet and welcoming. He simply could not get enough of her. Part of him knew he might have scared her, but he was ignited, burning, and then when they broke apart for breath, she’d said in a dazed voice, “Well, I was supposed to save that for the summer festival, but never mind.”

Who wouldn’t have kissed her again after that?

The summer festival’s gift included things more like kimono-shedding, moaning, and general nudity. She really was the most beautiful woman. He loved how volleyball had shaped her, making her strong and ready for him, muscled thighs parted and her hands powerfully gripping his back, and yet her breasts were soft as pillows, and the place between her legs was wet and was driving him crazy. 

She hadn’t been able to get up the next morning. When Kiyoko came to his room asking if he’d seen her, he’d had to stop himself from laughing uncontrollably. 

Sayaka, the girl in the ambulance, had reminded him of Yui. Suddenly, he wanted to go home. 

It had started raining by the time Daichi got in the car. Fat droplets of water showered the windows as he joined the melee of traffic, yet his mind was elsewhere. He parked the car in the driveway and got out, walking over to the front door and smiling to himself when he read the inscription on the doormat. Oya oya. 

He reached for the doorbell but stopped himself just in time. 

The keys were wet with rain, and his hands were slippery with a distractedness that was unfamiliar to him. Daichi opened the door and stepped inside, carefully taking off his shoes. There were no lights on in the house. The lingering smell of vanilla candles tickled his nose. 

“Yui, I’m home,” he said. 

When there was no answer, he moved to the living room. He put his bag down. He made himself a cup of coffee. But then, he heard the sound of slippers and soft arms went around his waist and hugged him with a strength only one woman had. 

“Hey handsome,” Yui said, snuggling into his back. 

“I thought you were asleep.”

“No, but the baby is. I just put him down.”

He remembered the stress he’d felt when Mizukashi’s wife called him frantically, saying she’d been taken away in an ambulance after her water had broken. He’d been at the west end of Miyagi handling a drug bust and he’d hated himself, at that moment, for not staying with her. 

At the hospital, he’d barged into the ward, and there she had been, with little Sawamura Shoyo suckling gently at his mother’s breast. Yui had grinned and had asked him to take a picture. 

He’d seen thirty years of life in her eyes. Ten years of childhood and bike races and picking dandelions, another ten discovering what it was to be a woman, to be part of a team, to love and live and dodge chemistry tests. And the next ten, university. Marriage. The Big Two. 

All those moments, whirling around to create a baby no bigger than a kitten, weighing a mere three kilogram, with Yui’s nose and his eyelids. Daichi saw the next thirty or so years in his son. He’d grow older with Yui and Shoyo and maybe even a daughter next, or a son like Shoyo. He’d have to deal with first crushes, first driving lessons, first everything. He’d grow white hair and sit on the verandah with Yui and watch old volleyball reruns together, sipping tea, simply adoring each other’s company, till the very end. 

“I heard it was a car crash,” Yui said, head in the pantry. “Do you want eggs? I can whip up some noodles as well if you want. And there’s soju. No, some drink from Italy. Noya sent it. Tastes nice.”

“Eggs are perfect,” he said. 

He caught her before she reached the fridge and kissed her. “Someone’s clingy,” she murmured. “Poor baby. Don’t worry, car crashes always happen.”

Daichi nuzzled his lips into the crook of her neck. “I’ve seen worse. It’s fine.”

“Do you want to take this to the bedroom then?”

“That, Michimiya Yui, is a very good idea.”

He scooped her up and made a beeline for their room. She was laughing. She was bright and brilliant, and she was his and his alone. He pressed his last name and her first into every inch of her skin, so that she would not forget, and neither would he. 

Ah, yes, Daichi thought. 

There were a thousand ways to remember. 

a/n: My first Daiyui oneshot!! Tell me what you think :)


End file.
